Summations Only

You're selling yourself short. Your mistakes, misunderstandings and miscomprehensions are legion.You just replied to an 820 word message with a 101 word message. Here are the key points you ignored:

• The extent of the water isn't a factor. It's the rate of dropping water level that matters. Physics. It doesn't matter whether the water level is dropping at 1.5 inches/minute in a kiddie pool or an Olympic pool or a planet sized ocean.
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• Transforming the rate into different units doesn't change anything. It's a minuscule rate, and your thin sheet of water of a few inches deep is only going to flow for 3 or 4 minutes before there's nothing left of the sheet, because the water level is dropping at 1.5 inches/minute. 3 or 4 minutes of a slow flow isn't going to erode anything, not even wet and malleable rock.
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  Keep in mind that you're talking about a thin sheet of water a few inches deep. This isn't really much water, less than .1 cubic miles spread across an area of 1152 square miles, which is the area of the Kaibab Plateau.
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  Also, as the amount of exposed land increases the rate of flow resulting from a dropping water level of 1.5 inches/minute will also increase. But the average land elevation on Earth is only 2750 feet, while the height of the Kaibab Plateau is around 8000 feet. In your scenario very little land is exposed at this point, and so the flow rate is still very slow.
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• About water draining from a bathtub, at the drain it drains from the bottom. The further you get from the drain the more the water just generally flows toward the drain. And about its value as an analogy to water draining off the continents, it isn't an appropriate model for your scenario, where water would drain toward all seas, not toward one single drain.
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• The ocean floor has not dropped. Surveys of the ocean floor after WWII in order to aid submarine navigation revealed a great deal of information about mid-oceanic ridges and sea floor striping and so on, but not an ounce of evidence for dropping sea floors.
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• There is no evidence of any obstacles on the Kaibab Plateau, the ones you have somehow impeding the flow of water while enhancing its force.
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• How do unconsolidated sediments and wet and malleable rock fracture?
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• How is it that strata broke up into small enough pieces to be carried away by four inches of water that flowed for only a few minutes?
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• How are floods and lakes from before you think the world existed evidence for a global flood only 4500 years ago.

This morning I was 50 messages behind. Now late in the afternoon I am 72 messages behind. You could help me catch up by taking the time to reply to what is posted to you.--Percy

I provided the context. It was Edge saying that erosion ultimately causes flat plains. Which you denied.

Can I still believe in God if I don't believe in buried strata tilting, rock evaporating, sea floors rising and dropping, continents dancing jigs, floods sorting sediments, corpses and radiometric isotopes, and all the rest?--Percy

See Message 396. Took 15 seconds to find. You do know the discussion board has a search facility, right?I agree with you about including images in posts. I've been trying to encourage people to include any images under discussion in every message. There's almost no overhead involved.--Percy

When in your browser window just hit Ctrl-+ and the page will increment in size. Hit Ctrl-+ as many times as needed to grow the page (and it's attendant images) as large as you need. You may need to pan around to get the image in the field of view. When done simply hit Ctrl-0 and the page will return to normal size.Edge didn't respond, so I'll attempt an answer: Here's a satellite view of the Grand Canyon from Google Maps. There are straight parts and meandering parts: You'll probably want to click on "View larger map".--Percy

Interesting - I didn't know this was possible: --Percy

I don't remember. Fine, I'm sorry if I misread you. Please forgive.

OK.

Smith diagram for reference: Thank you for giving a clearer description so I can at least get the gist of it. Icouldn't see the print (I see it now; sometimes I can see and sometimes I can't with borderline images, something to do with visual fatigue I think) so didn't know what edge was talking about referring to "old red sandstone" and the like.I copied your post and the diagram into a Word document and blew it up to print it out in landscape format, made it as big as I could in that format which isn't really big enough for my eyesight problems, used a magnifier to try to follow your remarks and think I got the main idea though there are still some words on the diagram I can't see.Don't know what the "peak" is you are talking about, or I think I may but find it hard to believe you'd call that a peak.HOWEVER, here's the problem. You are trying to convince me that you can tell what the original horizontal strata looked like from this area of extremely deformed strata underground, and I don't see it It's most likely that the deformation itself accounts for what you are imputing to the original deposition."Cut by an erosional surface??" Not even sure what that means but in any case it describes the deformed strata with no reason to think it applies to the original deposited strata."..cearly deposited on an irregular surface, but filled it in rather than following it." The "irregular surface" is the product of the deformation, no reason to impute it to the original horizontal deposition. And it's interesting you say the deposited layer filled in the irregularity rather than following it because somebody, you I think, was insistting that the strata followed the Kaibab rise of the Paleozoic strata in the Grand Canyon.And you say some of them "pinch out" etc., which has to be another consequence of the deformation rather than the original horizontal laying out.Here are a couple of the pictures of deformed strata that I posted back in Message 419 where I could point out places the layers "pinch out" or stop altogether, or thicken as if filling in an irregularity perhaps. Are you going to tell me all these things in these deformed blocks of strata are evidence of how they were originally laid down rather than the consequence of the deformation? So it still looks to me like the strata were all laid down in the usual horizontal fashion and were then deformed as an entire block from the Cambrian to the Recent. It's really not fair even to try to prove your point with an extremely deformed stratigraphic column anyway. If you can't prove it with straight flat strata then you can't prove it at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I thought you had determined that all strata were laid down horizontal, flat and continuous.So, now you are uncertain? Of course deformation has changed them from horizonatal, flat and continuous. That's why we call it 'deformation'. Are you just being obtuse here?If you had a stack of pancakes and eroded it away with your fork the layers would be interrupted, would they not? Red herring.It doesn't matter how the irregular surface formed. The erosional surface still cuts the stratigraphy of the older rocks. Sure, if the layering is horizontal and the surface it is deposited on is not, then you have an unconformity.You are just throwing things against the wall to see if anything sticks. And failing to do anything but obfuscate. No. It means that there were topographic irregularities resulting in what we call an on-lap feature. It's like the Grand Canyon where the Tapeats pinches out against the Shinumo Quartzite monadnocks. This is a misapplication of the term 'pinch-out'. Certainly not what Paul was talking about.Nevertheless, it is also irrelevant to your point. There is more deformation in the lower layers of rocks in each case. How did that happen if they were all deformed together "as a block"? Whut??So, it's not fair to talk about deformed rocks when you are discussing deformation?Edited by edge, : No reason given.

??? The miscommunication is now beyond hopeless. I don't think you said one thing that relates to anything I said. I don't know where to begin.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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HOWEVER, here's the problem. You are trying to convince me that you can tell what the original horizontal strata looked like from this area of extremely deformed strata underground, and I don't see it It's most likely that the deformation itself accounts for what you are imputing to the original deposition.

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Actually no. I am arguing that we can tell that the deformed strata have been eroded after deformation. And we can do that by seeing that the strata have been cut off - they terminate where they meet the stratum above, which has not suffered the same deformation.

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"..cearly deposited on an irregular surface, but filled it in rather than following it." The "irregular surface" is the product of the deformation, no reason to impute it to the original horizontal deposition. And it's interesting you say the deposited layer filled in the irregularity rather than following it because somebody, you I think, was insistting that the strata followed the Kaibab rise of the Paleozoic strata in the Grand Canyon.

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No. To start with the last point I mentioned that it was not impossible for later strata to follow the uplift - not that they had actually done so. I don’t remember anyone insisting otherwise, ever.However, the fact that the upper and lower surfaces are not parallel (while the strata when shown are) does indicate in this case that the irregularities were filled in rather than being the result of later deformation.

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Here are a couple of the pictures of deformed strata that I posted back in Message 419 where I could point out places the layers "pinch out" or stop altogether, or thicken as if filling in an irregularity perhaps. Are you going to tell me all these things in these deformed blocks of strata are evidence of how they were originally laid down rather than the consequence of the deformation?

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I don’t see anything like that, while the diagram is really clear: Your images again: In the second one it looks very much as if the fold occurred before the unfolded rock above it was deposited.

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So it still looks to me like the strata were all laid down in the usual horizontal fashion and were then deformed as an entire block from the Cambrian to the Recent.

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No it doesn’t.

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It's really not fair even to try to prove your point with an extremely deformed stratigraphic column anyway. If you can't prove it with straight flat strata then you can't prove it at all.

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Your usual baseless whining is noticed. First, if we are going to show evidence of deformation occurring before all the strata were deposited we have to show deformed strata. Second, places where the deformation is cut off are extremely good evidence of erosion occurring before all the strata were deposited. Third, you brought up this cross section by using the misleading Smith diagram and a correction was needed. Fourth, part of that correction is showing that the more accurate diagram includes evidence against your claims.Whining that people dare to show that you are wrong - as you frequently do - is hardly sensible.

De3formation on top of deformation?: What would that prove?ABE: I can make abolustley no sense of your reasoning about strata being "cut off."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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De3formation on top of deformation?: What would that prove?

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ABE: I can make abolustley no sense of your reasoning about strata being "cut off."

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It’s a LACK of deformation on top of deformation. The upper layers do not show the same deformation. (They may show some but not the same)That the strata are cut off is an observation. They rise until they meet the upper strata and then stop.From this we conclude that the deformed lower layers were truncated by erosion and then the upper layers were deposited on top.

ABE: Sorry, I keep editing this because I can't make sense of it and keep having different thoughts about it. I'm back to thinking that although you denied it you are describing the original laying down of the strata, lower strata being eroded before upper strata deposited, but you are making this case from the whole deformed stack, which is what makes no sense. As I said, I think what we see in the deformed stack happened after all the deformation had occurred. There's really no reason to think otherwise. /ABE I keep trying to make sense of this and just can't. I get the idea, I get that you think the lower deformed strata look like they were cut off by erosion and since the strata above them are relatively undeformed by comparison they must have been laid down after the lower were eroded. But this is happening to a whole area of already-deformed strata which has nothing to do with the original laying down of the layers. Sorry, makes no sense.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.